Subscriber News: February 2021
Recent Honors
Congratulations to Alan W. King. His chapbook Crooked Smiling Light is forthcoming from Plan B Press. Watch the book trailer featuring his poem "Gluttony", and visit his website to see more of his work. US Poet Laureate Joy Harjo calls him "one of my favorite up and coming poets of his generation."
Congratulations to Naila Moreira. Her poetry chapbook Clearstories, a collaboration with photographer Stephen Petegorsky, was published in January as an online feature in the nature magazine Terrain.org. She describes the project as follows: "Clearstories is a series of photographs of cleared and stained animal specimens. In this process, specimens are treated with an enzyme to turn soft tissues transparent, then stained to make bones and cartilage stand out for studies of anatomy and morphology. The paired poems focus on nine of the animals, their natural history, threats to their well-being, and our emotional and historical connections to them. As so many creatures face extinction at the hands of man, it feels like the right time to look closely at what animals can and should mean to us."
Congratulations to Sally Bellerose. Her novel Fishwives was published this month by Bywater Books. Fishwives chronicles the lifelong love and political adventures of a now-elderly working-class lesbian couple in Massachusetts. Foreword Reviews says, "There is no happy-ever-after here, not in the traditional sense. There is only painful, imperfect, wonderful love. In the reflective novel Fishwives, two willful women defy the odds to make a life together." Reviewer Amos Lassen wrote, "Sally Bellerose is a wonderful writer who sees life as it is showing us that the definition of love is almost the same as the definition of life. We all go through so much together yet we often let the hard times slide from memory without understanding that they are also a part of who we are."
Congratulations to Kate Szegda. Her middle-grade novel Pharmacy Girl was a finalist in the 2020 American Book Fest Best Book Awards, Children's Fiction category. Written before COVID, Pharmacy Girl is the story of 12-year-old Josie Winslow and how she helps the people she loves—and hates—survive the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic. Visit the author's website for more about the awards this book has won and the inspiration behind it.
Congratulations to Cyrée Jarelle Johnson. They were recently chosen as the Brooklyn Public Library's first-ever Poet-in-Residence. About their plans for the position, Cyrée said, "I look forward to planning events that bring disabled poetics to a wider audience, particularly in a city as inaccessible as New York." Visit their website to read about their debut collection, Slingshot (Nightboat Books, 2019), winner of a Lambda Literary Award.
Congratulations to Annie Dawid. An excerpt from her novel manuscript Negroes and Jews are Hereby Declared Aliens was longlisted for Grindstone Literary's 2020 International Novel Prize. The current contest, with a top prize of 1,000 pounds and literary agency review, is now open through October 1. Her photo "Detail on the Anonymous Artists of America Schoolbus" appeared on the cover of The Westchester Review (Winter 2020).
Recent Publications
Winning Writers editor Jendi Reiter's poems "Close", "Soul Contract", and "Lower East Side Playground, 1974, 2014" will be published in Atelier of Healing: Poetry About Trauma and Recovery, an online anthology from Squircle Line Press. The book launch is planned for mid-2021 at Poetry Festival Singapore. The theme of this year's festival is "Catharsis" and submissions are open through June 28. In other news, Jendi's chapbook manuscript Made Man was a semifinalist in the 2020 Chad Walsh Poetry Chapbook Contest from Beloit Poetry Journal.
Winning Writers contest judge Soma Mei Sheng Frazier's story "Face" will be included in Home Is Where You Queer Your Heart, an anthology forthcoming this year from Foglifter Press. This book of poetry and prose will look at the complicated meanings of "home" for LGBTQ people.
Phyllis Klein has launched a Zoom reading series called "Poets in Conversation" on alternate Saturdays at 4:00-5:15 pm Pacific time. The events will also be recorded for later viewing on YouTube. Upcoming readers include Sandra Anfang and Kathleen McKlung on February 27, and Perie Longo, poet laureate emerita of Santa Barbara, on March 13. Email Phyllis to be added to the announcements mailing list and get the Zoom links. Visit her website for information about her debut collection from Grayson Books, The Full Moon Herald.
Scott Piner's debut poetry collection, Great Scott! And Other Poems, is available on Amazon. Scott describes his book as a reflection on "themes of questioning, dreaming, and believing, the concept of achievement, and your belief in what's next."
David Kherdian's poetic memoir A Place in Time, a collection of prose and poetry that captures the spirit of the American factory town, is available from his Cascade Press imprint. Watch a video of his poem "The Lighthouse" from this collection on YouTube.
Susan Stinson's essay "On Books and Their Harbors" was published in January on the Kenyon Review blog. In it she writes about the importance of the independent bookstore community, and the reissue of her novel Martha Moody (Small Beer Press, 2020), a "love story about fat lesbians and a flying cow in the Old West". Judith Katz's review at Lambda Literary calls the book "substantial and delicious".
Aadil Farook's poetry collection Universal Anthems: Revolutionary Message for a Global Cause is available as an e-book download from his website. This compendium of Islamic spiritual poetry combines three shorter collections that were previously published in Pakistan.
Published: February 9, 2021
